It is known that around 1850 the Providence architect Thomas Tefft built for William Slater a large, mansarded house with a four-story tower, which has disappeared. It therefore seems likely that this caretaker's cottage was Tefft's, as the high quality of the design also suggests. An early Victorian house with the principal bracketed roof gable paralleling the road, it has an abrupt cross gable at the center that provides a mildly “Gothic” quality, even though the windows in it are not pointed, but round-arched, which Tefft much favored. More round-arched triplet windows appear in the gables of the side elevations. The bracketed porch running around the corner of the main block to the rear ell is supported on especially handsome trellising, which is probably a later addition.